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WARRANTIES VALID project as costing from $7000 to $10,000 for one primer coat and two finish coats. These bottom-line price comparisons make factoryfinished siding look attractive. Fiber-cement siding can come with a transferable warranty Hide your handiwork Siding nails ca be ordered with any paint color on the head. Maze Nails (www .mazenails.com keeps stocks of nails to match all CertainTeed and Hardie standard colors. Typically, hand-driven nails with a blunt tip and thin shank are used on cedar, while pneumatic fasteners with a steeply cut tip and thick shank secure fiber cement. When hand-nailing, use a polyurethane cap on e hammer vailable om the nail anufacturer) avoid amaging e finish. An uminum nose on a pneumatic nailer (photo facing page) protects factoryfinished fiber-cement siding. Color-matching paint kits (photo below) coat cut ends on site. Several bottles should come with your siding order, but if you’ve chosen a custom color, it’s smart to order extra touch-up paint. All three fiber-cement manufacturers mentioned here (Nichiha, CertainTeed, James Hardie) offer warranties that cover the siding itself as well as the factory finish, as long as you use the proprietary finish applied by the manufacturer. Although 25-year warranies are available with a special-order extra inish coat of paint, the typical single-coat warranty is 15 years. The substrate waranty, which can be up to 50 years and which primarily covers delamination, and the proprietary-finish warranty are transferable to a new homeowner, which factors positively in a home’s resale value. If you want to go beyond the limited selection of proprietary finish colors available from fiber-cement manufacturers, your lumberyard can arrange to have an independent machine finisher apply a much-broader selection of color choices. In this case, the fiber-cement manufacturer still warrants the substrate, but the paint warranty comes from the paint manufacturer. Choose this finish option, and you can get up to a 25-year warranty against finish failure (sidebar p. 46). For cedar siding, the warranty for a factory finish comes from the paint manufacturer and is typically for 15 to 25 years, depending on how many coats are applied. These warranties aren’t transferable, and if there’s a problem with the siding itself, you’ll have to contact the siding manufacturer or installer to address these issues. Some site-painting required For cedar siding, factory finishers recommend that a final whole-house coat be applied on site to seal the end grain and the face nails. Even if all the siding is factory-finished, the resh end cuts need to be painted as the sidng is installed. Hugh Schreiber, a remodeling contractor in Berkeley, Calif., has done his share of painting (FHB #181, and online at Fine Homebuilding.com), but he has also installed Hardie’s ColorPlus fiber-cement lap siding. Schreiber says a more-streamlined installation is the biggest advantage of using factoryfinished siding. “Brushing carefully to cut in the trim where it meets the siding is a huge www.finehomebuilding.com Plastic clapboards sport an auto-body finish and a lifetime warranty The widespread use of cellular PVC trim (such as Azek, Versatex, Kleer, and KOMA) has prompted one manufacturer to create solid PVC clapboards. NuCedar (www.nucedar.com) mills square-edged PVC boards into beveled siding with exposures of 4 in., 6 in., and 8 in. WARRANTIE WARRANTIE WARRANTIE WARRANTIE WARRANTIE WARRANTIE WARRANTIE WARRANTIE WARRANTIE WARRANTIE WARRANTIE WARRANTIE WARRANTIE IES VALID project as costing from $7000 to $10,000 for one primer coat and two finish coats. These bottom-line price com RANTIES VALID project as costing from $7000 to $10,000 for one primer coat and two finish coats. These bottom-line price comparisons make factory- finished siding look attractive. Fiber-cement siding can come with a transferable warranty Hide your handiwork Siding nails ca be ordered with any paint color on the head. Maze Nails (www .mazenails.com keeps stocks of nails to match all CertainTeed and Hardie standard colors. Typically, hand-driven nails with a blunt tip and thin shank are used on cedar, while pneumatic fasteners with a steeply cut tip and thick shank secure fiber cement. When hand-nailing, use a polyurethane cap on e hammer vailable om the nail anufacturer) avoid amaging e finish. An uminum nose on a pneumatic nailer (photo facing page) protects factory- finished fiber-cement siding. Color-matching paint kits (photo below) coat cut ends on site. Several bottles should come with your siding order, but if you’ve chosen a custom color, it’s smart to order extra touch-up paint. All three fiber-cement manufacturers men- tioned here (Nichiha, CertainTeed, James Hardie) offer warranties that cover the sid- ing itself as well as the factory finish, as long as you use the proprietary finish applied by the manufacturer. Although 25-year warran- ies are available with a special-order extra inish coat of paint, the typical single-coat warranty is 15 years. The substrate war- anty, which can be up to 50 years and which primarily covers delamination, and the proprietary-finish warranty are transferable to a new homeowner, which factors positively in a home’s resale value. If you want to go beyond the limited selection of proprietary finish colors avail- able from fiber-cement manufacturers, your lumberyard can arrange to have an indepen- dent machine finisher apply a much-broader selection of color choices. In this case, the fiber-cement manufacturer still warrants the substrate, but the paint warranty comes from the paint manufacturer. Choose this finish option, and you can get up to a 25-year war- ranty against finish failure (sidebar p. 46). For cedar siding, the warranty for a factory finish comes from the paint manufacturer and is typically for 15 to 25 years, depend- ing on how many coats are applied. These warranties aren’t transferable, and if there’s a problem with the siding itself, you’ll have to contact the siding manufacturer or installer to address these issues. Some site-painting required For cedar siding, factory finishers recommend that a final whole-house coat be applied on site to seal the end grain and the face nails. Even if all the siding is factory-finished, the resh end cuts need to be painted as the sid- ng is installed. Hugh Schreiber, a remodeling contrac- tor in Berkeley, Calif., has done his share of painting (FHB #181, and online at Fine Homebuilding.com), but he has also installed Hardie’s ColorPlus fiber-cement lap siding. Schreiber says a more-streamlined installa- tion is the biggest advantage of using factory- finished siding. “Brushing carefully to cut in the trim where it meets the siding is a huge www.finehomebuilding.com Plastic clapboards sport an auto-body finish and a lifetime warranty The widespread use of cellular PVC trim (such as Azek, Versatex, Kleer, and KOMA) has prompted one manufacturer to create solid PVC clapboards. NuCedar (www.nucedar.com) mills square-edged PVC boards into beveled siding with exposures of 4 in., 6 in., and 8 in. Two Two surface textures are offered: smooth and CedarGrain. Finish is applied with automotive spray equipment; 22 standard colors and more than 1400 custom colors are available. Installed over housewrap, each NuCedar board has a nailing flange and is designed to interlock with the previous course. Compatible trim boards are part of the siding system, and the limited lifetime warranty can be downloaded from NuCedar’s Web site. Expect to pay $4 to $5 per sq. ft. of wall for the material. Is PVC green? Well, it does have some dura- bility and maintenance benefits (especially the fact that it doesn’t need to be painted), but it also has some environmental drawbacks. Environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the Healthy Building Network have targeted PVC for phasing out. AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2008 45